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Published in

American Institute of Physics, Applied Physics Letters, 17(102), p. 172405

DOI: 10.1063/1.4803474

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Molecular dynamics simulation of Lorentz force microscopy in magnetic nano-disks

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a molecular dynamics simulation to model the Lorentz force microscopy experiment. Experimentally, this technique consists in the scattering of electrons by magnetic structures in surfaces and gases. Here, we will explore the behavior of electrons colliding with nano-magnetic disks. The computational molecular dynamics experiment allows us to follow the trajectory of individual electrons all along the experiment. In order to compare our results with the experimental one reported in literature, we model the experimental electron detectors in a simplified way: a photo-sensitive screen is simulated in such way that it counts the number of electrons that collide at a certain position. The information is organized to give in grey scale the image information about the magnetic properties of the structure in the target. Computationally, the sensor is modeled as a square matrix in which we count how many electrons collide at each specific point after being scattered by the magnetic structure. We have used several configurations of the magnetic nano-disks to understand the behavior of the scattered electrons, changing the orientation direction of the magnetic moments in the nano-disk in several ways. Our results match very well with the experiments, showing that this simulation can become a powerful technique to help to interpret experimental results.